


Break With Reality

by 20Zvorak17



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dead Bobby, Dead John, Dead Pastor Jim, Dead YED, Despite Sam's best efforts, Gen, Homeless!Sam, Out of hunting Dean, Reconciliation, au!, sex worker!Sam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-04-18 16:21:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14217030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/20Zvorak17/pseuds/20Zvorak17
Summary: In which Dean stays with Sonny, John gets the demon and his last request is for Sam to reunite with his brother. Sam's not sure how he's supposed to get from Nevada to New York, but he'll do it.Between the attempted reconciliation in current times and Sam's journey in flashback, will they ever be what they once were?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is mostly just to get us into the story. It'll get more interesting from here.

"Protests against Richmond's tolerance of homeless people have come to a head here, where the local homeless shelter was burnt down late last night." The TV was saying. Even three years later, now seventeen, Dean's ears still perked up at fires, just in case. "Can you tell us what happened?" The reporter was now asking the coordinator. 

"We've been receiving threats in the past month. One of our kids, Sam Winchester, headed up a watch-group immediately. He, some of the other boys that stay here, and several of our veterans saved forty-two of our residents last night. Unfortunately, thirty five people were still trapped inside when the building collapsed." The coordinator kept speaking but Dean was on his feet. He had to get to Sonny and they had to get to Richmond, to  _Sammy._

* * *

"Dean," Sonny ventured when they were five minutes out, "you know this kid ain't gonna be like you remember."

"Of course!"

"I just mean...well if he's going on fourteen he'll probably be a lot like you were when you came here. He'll probably even be that way with you."

"He's still my brother."

"He is," Sonny flipped the blinker, "but he's not the ten year old kid you remember."

Dean heard that, he did. He was prepared for a different Sam. He just hoped he was prepared enough.

* * *

 

"I understand," Sonny was telling the DCFS agent, who was apparently reluctant to turn Sam over to them. "but his brother lives with me. I'm the director of Sonny's Home for Boys in New York." 

"How did one end up in foster care and not the other?" The blonde woman asked in apparent consternation.

"Just let me take Sam. His brother is here with me." He gestured at Dean and the lady followed his arm to meet Dean's hopeful gaze.

She sighed, "Let me clear it with my bosses."

Sonny did have to explain how he came to have custody of Dean and not Sam, but in the end the floppy-haired thirteen year old was allowed to leave with them. "You'll want to read his file as soon as you have time," the lady from before appraised in a low voice.

"Is he dangerous?" Sonny inquired in a suited tone.

"...he doesn't mean to be but we accidentally set him off and he started throwing heavy objects--not at us, and it was just because he was angry, but it _could've_ gone badly. Hopefully that'll tell you how not to set him off. Otherwise he's a real quiet kid, closed off but more or less polite. You might call him sweet."

"So his brother keeps saying." Sonny concurred with a nod and Sam's case worker returned with her charge, literally handing him into Sonny's custody.

Dean was bouncing on his toes where he waited. And as soon as Sam was in rushing distance, Dean went for a hug. "Sammy!" 

Sam neatly stepped out of reach. "Please call me Sam, Dean. Dad is dead, if you care." Then he dismissed the older Winchester entirely, "I'm ready to go sir. Thanks for picking me up."

Sonny glanced, concerned, towards Dean whose face was entirely blank. Sonny recognized the expression from the early days; it meant Dean was trying not to show his hurt. When he asked him about it at the restaurant where they stopped for dinner while Sam had excused himself to the restroom Dean had nearly cried.

_"Why do you call me, Sammy?" Eight year old Sam had asked, picking at the comforter, "Dad doesn't. He says I'm too old for it."_

_"You're my kid," Dean had replied, "you're never too old for that."_

"After that," Dean continued, voice thick, “he stopped complaining about me calling him Sammy. You thought it was a nickname he'd outgrown, right? He's revoking my right to call him Sammy. He's telling me he's not my kid anymore."


	2. Chapter 2

"So, Sam," Sonny said, swallowing a bite of burger, "why don't you tell me a bit about yourself?"

"My file doesn't tell you everything you need to know?" The scathing response is not really a question.

The older man, who had skimmed the file, recognized this for the defensive tactic it was and tried to decide how best to respond to it. He could step delicately around the issue to which Sam was referring, or he could offer some kind of pointed comment. What would Sam respond to?

"If that's what you want to discuss in the middle of a crowded diner, we certainly can." He raised an eyebrow in mock inquiry, "but I thought maybe you could tell me what your favorite subject in school is."

Sam shifted uncomfortably, a grimace overtaking his features. "I haven't attended school since I was ten," Sam admitted quietly, causing Dean's heart to drop, blame for himself rising up, "but lately I've been reading about multiverse theory which is _fascinating_."

"What's multiverse theory?" Dean asked, aiming for casual, hoping to foster the enthusiasm Sam couldn't quite hide. Instead, he watched it drain away.

"Wouldn't interest you," Sam said after a beat, tone so respectful it bordered on insolent. It was a tone, Dean realized with a sinking stomach, that Sam had begun to utilize with John in the months before Dean's escape. He said it with a forcible smile and hard eyes and though it sounded like deference to the unobservant bystander, to all at the table, it was obviously an insult. In a manner Dean could not quite iterate, he'd just been called stupid.

Seeing a potential conflict--as well as a problem, as Sam would need to be enrolled when they returned to New York--Sonny stepped in.

"What was the last grade you completed, Sam?" Calm, accepting, seemingly only perfunctorily concerned, armed with knowledge that Sam would accept nothing more than a compulsory concern, nothing  _real,_ just yet.

"Fifth," his affect was flat--subject closed. It was obvious to Dean, and to Sonny, what had happened. The eldest Winchester leaving his boys behind and alone one too many times had resulted in Dean ending up at Sonny's. While Dean had seen it as an escape from the chains their father had saddled him with, John had clearly interpreted it as defecting--and, in turn, tightened Sam's own fetters, pulling him from school and, Dean assumed, dragging him on every single hunt.

"Well, you'll have to sit for placement tests, then," Sonny answered easily, because kids who hadn't attended school in three years may have been uncommon, even in the field of Social Work--though certainly not unheard of--but neglected and emotionally abused children were a dime a dozen, with new ones passing through his boys' home all the time, a few of them even staying. This was something he could easily handle. In contradiction, Dean's jaw worked furiously as all he wanted to do was punch something, preferably the now deceased John Winchester, but at this point he wasn't feeling terribly persnickety. 

He wanted to say something more, even opened his mouth to do so, but nothing came out. He turned his attention to his burger instead, just as Sam had done with his chicken salad. Something in that bothered Dean. Sam had always just ordered what Dean did, back when he had still been tiny. If there was anything Sam no longer was, it was tiny. He was average height for his age now but, much like a German Shepard, he'd eventually grow into those paws of his and he'd be huge. Already his shoulders were broad and his musculature was his every pound. But his face hadn't changed; it hadn't so much as grown a freckle while Dean wasn't looking, and there was a kind of comfort in that, false though it may have been.

"You should slow down, Sam," Dean advised cautiously, aware he no longer held the kind of place in Sam's life that allowed him to warn or scold.

"You eat when there's food," Sam argued, breaking Dean's heart. Obviously, even with Sam as Dad's shadow daily, there hadn't always been food. Perhaps there hadn't been money for it, perhaps John hadn't had the time or, hell, maybe he had forced Sam to adopt the same 'I'll eat when it's dead' mentality their father so favored. That was ignoring the last year, since soup kitchens and churches ran out of food from time to time. Sonny, who knew that Sam had spent some time in a level five group home--plus his stint in JDC--assumed it had been a very long time since the kid had gotten to have diner food, which he knew from Dean to have been a staple of their youth. For the first six months Dean had felt comfortable nowhere at the house but practically at home at the diner.

"There's one thing I can promise you right now," Sonny interfered again, defusing the tension, "so long as you stay with me there will always be food."

Sam wasn't sure whether to believe him, because, in Sam's experience, adults never kept their promises, but he wanted to believe it. Oh, how he wanted.

If the only change in his circumstances was going from 'Usually enough for everyone to have one plate' to 'Always enough for seconds' it would still be the best thing that had happened to Sam since maybe ever.

In the meantime, being able to order dessert (because there's enough for money for that in this new life, it seems) is pretty damn good, too.


	3. Chapter 3

The house is big. In fact, it's too big to secure. He can carve all the sigils and protections into his bedposts and salt the room, but the rest of the house is on its own. But it's more than that. There's simply too much space. Sam is used to claustrophobic conditions, tiny motel rooms shared with his Dad and then overcrowded, underfunded group homes and abandoned box-sized apartments followed by a homeless shelter that forcibly fit fifteen to a room. He loathes and envies his brother, who walks in like this is where the water tastes normal. Then again, for Dean it  _is_ home and Sam just wishes that he knew what having a home was like. It's too late now. Sam is really beyond the point of being able to have nice things. More accurately, he's convinced himself that he is beyond being able to accept them. 

"Boys twelve and up share a room," Sonny explains, "Dean can get you set up."

"Thank you, sir."

”Your bed will just be beside mine.”

”Great.” He didn’t even attempt enthusiasm; didn’t want to. 

“Dinner is in 45,” Dean finally concedes, turning away. Sam sets to work on the sigils, perfectly precise. Several more than Dean’s bed bears, but many of them the same. Sam’s are notably more perfect, though, because John had insisted. All told, Sam had likely spent upwards of a hundred hours drawing symbols AS PRACTICE let alone  _in practice_. Dean’s five point is missing the West-facing dot. Getting these right has been son ingrained San can’t let that stand. He’s not concerned or whatever, but it is his job to notice these things.

He fixes them.

* * *

 

"Alright, boys," Sonny says. "We've got a new resident, so we're gonna go around, introduce ourselves and include a fact."

As observant as ever, Dean already knows that Sam recognizes Ethan and he's wondering if that might come out. It does, kind of, because when Ethan's turn comes up his fact is 'I'm in New York because I owe somebody who was headed for New York.'

It's a pretty pointed comment.

"Do you owe him?" Sam questions very deliberately. "Or did he specifically tell you you didn't owe him anything?"

"I would've been stuck in that level five home without him." Ethan insists.

"I'm sure your help was invaluable to him as well since the type of alarms I _assume_ that you mean took two people to disable." Dean isn't sure if the two of them are trying to maintain deniable plausibility or what but it's interesting information that Dean did not previously have.

Sam hadn't noticed anyone else's interest, eyes narrowed at the kid he'd thought he'd seen the last of back in Detroit.

Dean resolves to catch up with the kid later.

..

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not once in the show have Sam and Dean gone to a karaoke bar together and if you think it's not because of the time in college when they did and Sam embarrassed Dean by singing True Colors at him then you are quite incorrect.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How it all began

_Nine months prior_

John slammed into the hotel room, tossing his belongings into his duffel bag. Quickly, Sam shot to his feet and reached for his own things but John stopped him cold, "It's  _the demon,_ Sammy. You stay here, okay, and if I'm not back in one week, open this envelope."

"You can't go alone, Dad!" Sam had countered, aghast and indignant, "or are you trying to get yourself killed?" 

"I have back up, Sammy." He promised swiftly, sensing one of Sam's famous freak=outs if he didn't head it off, "Bobby, Jim and Caleb, alright? And remember, one week--that envelope."

And because there's nothing else Sam can do--because anything else was trained out of him--he straightens his back and says, "Yes, sir."

                 

* * *

* * *

 

One week passes and then two, but Sam still waits, unwilling to believe that his Dad is not returning. The money'd run out three days ago but Sam had done odd jobs; they'd been enough to keep him fed. He couldn't stay in the desert of Nevada for the summer (already the hottest on record), though, not without shelter, and he has to open the envelope.  If there's money he can catch a bus to someplace bearable, he hopes. 

There's a stack of money.  Mostly twenties, it's only about four hundred dollars but that's better than what he had before. There's also an address for Dean, a request for them to reunite and an apology. Sam knows four hundred dollars isn't going to get him to the other side of the country. He calls all the hunters he knows, hopeful that one of them can take him and call Dean. A young woman answers at Pastor Jim's parish; the new Pastor. Apparently, Jim had died,  _so sorry to be the one to tell you about your uncle, kiddo._ There's no answer from Bobby or Caleb, either and if they don't call him back by the end of the day-well, they always call back, so.

Sam knows he has to be smart about this. The money will run out; a kid just turned thirteen on his own will draw attention, so he needs to minimize the amount of time spent in public spaces, which unfortunately means bus terminals. Sam will be hopping trains for the foreseeable future and now that he's got somewhere to go there's no point hanging around.

 

Dean had taught him that.

He makes his way to the tracks, knowing it's harder to hop a moving train than you might think. Sam finds out that no matter how difficult you think it is, it's more difficult. He catches a handrail, just barely and has to throw himself inside. Hears his shoulder make an almighty noise as he lands on it wrong, gives it a twist and--yup--out of socket. It's fine, he's fine, when the train stops he grabs the handrail, straightens his arm and pushes hard with his foot. It pops into place with a sickening noise and it goddamn feels like the time a ghoul had thrown him. He's officially in Utah, at least, which means that if he does get grabbed his name won't pop. Here he doesn't exist and that's got to make it easier to disappear. He finds himself a LGBT youth center and thanks his lucky stars that Salt Lake City is ahead, leaps and bounds, of the rest of the more conservative state. He should've known better.

The thing about luck? (John taught him this one) It doesn't last.

If you stay at the shelter, you're required to either go to school or home-study. The problem is Sam is, in some areas, woefully behind and in others years ahead of his age group. As a long-term social worker, the head of the shelter knows that comes from self-taught kids. In her well-meaning way, she wants to help; she wants to investigate John.  He can't let that happen. He buys some food and a bus ticket but the money runs out in Illinois. People don't trust you in their homes in the White City; they all have kids or neighbors or companies for mowing their lawns. One thing Sam knows, though, is that he's pretty and he's young, a combination that is positively lascivious to the right clientele. One more night and Sam will have enough to get to New York, no train hopping required. The luck runs out again when an attractive guy stops on Sam's corner, a goddamn UC, and Sam gets arrested by Detective Dawson, who asks him what he's doing this for, where are his parents,  _come on kid, don't make me book you._

"They're dead," Sam tells him sharpish, "I'm trying to survive."

The guy's idea of helping is to take him to a D5 home with locks on every door.

It isn't helpful. 


End file.
